Scripture Reading
“Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; His greatness no one can fathom.” – Psalm 145:3
Lately I’ve been thanking God that He is immeasurable and incomprehensible. He has no limits; He is unable to be fully known; He is an infinite mystery.
Earlier this year I suffered a serious injury that had me bedridden for weeks. I don’t know how I got hurt. The doctors don’t know how I got hurt. How can I literally not be able to stand up or drive or shower and no one know the cause?! Here’s the truth: God knows me full well. While the chiropractor, my parents and friends, and myself try to understand, God doesn’t try. He made me and He is intimately familiar with me. He knows exactly what went wrong and how it happened, and He knows exactly what I need to heal. While I am limited in my knowing, God is not. And this truth creates peace in my heart. I do not know myself fully nor can I, but I do know the one who knows me fully and He is good and He is trustworthy. So, in my limitedness I acknowledge and praise my limitless Papa.
To say I can know God fully would imply that He has limits and can be measured and that would somehow place God not above me, as He is, but beside me. It’s not that He isn’t able to be known but that He is so unlimited in Himself that it is impossible to know Him fully. All throughout the Bible, God consistently and constantly affirms He knows his creations better than we know ourselves. For example, God’s reply to Job in Job 38-41 and Jesus’ reply to the woman at the well in John 4. This vastness of God should cause us to tremble. But we can also find peace and assurance that God is fully good so all that we don’t know about Him is fully good too. God doesn’t have skeletons in His closet, but I guess if He did, they would only be good and pure and beautiful.
For the past two years I have been asking God to blow to my mind and I find myself more and more these days praising Him, “Wow, God, You are so much bigger than I thought You were.” God wouldn’t be much of a “god” if we were able to mark his boundaries or if we could grasp all of who He is. God is so much bigger than we think and so much bigger than we know and that’s a good thing because it reminds us that He is God and we are not.
Prayer
God who is immeasurable, You are more than I thought You were. You continually do things outside my imagination. Your ways are higher and Your thoughts are higher. Thank-you for your specific and complete care of me. You see me. You know me. Help me to think on You and of You rightly. Increase my faith that I might not underestimate You. Amen.